Poor workmanship and a "blame the customer attitude"

We ordered four items for our new kitchen: an island counter, a wine rack, a mantle piece and display shelving. All had to be returned. The counter went back twice and got thinner each time. The mantle piece was warped when it arrived and had to be remade. The owner was belligerent and tried to blame the builder. She tried to tell us that the deep gouges in the surface of the island counter were "natural wood tearing" when they were clearly bad workmanship. They had also joined the boards on the short side instead of the long side, leaving the end grain facing the room, which is highly unusual. Again, the owner tried to blame the builder and claimed he had ordered the wood in that orientation. I strongly suspect they used comstock offcuts instead of A-grade timber to make our counter. We had to fight and argue to get anything rectified and in the end we had to settle for what we got. There was no apology and we were treated like unreasonble customers making a fuss about nothing. Country Woods do NOT have a proper machine shop. Buying raw timber from them might be okay if you know what you're doing and choose the boards yourself, but go elsewhere if you want anything planed or laminated.